What’s in a Seal?

It was only during the Ottoman period, beginning in 1517, that seals gained popularity in the Arab world as a means to document people’s interactions with books. Some seals came alone while others accompanied handwritten notes. Some spelled out their purpose clearly through formulations such as “min kutub”, “hāḏā mā waqafa” or the like; others contained only pious formulae and a name. But even the latter are generally assumed to denote ownership or endowment. In this article, I present the example of a seal that belonged to a judge in early Ottoman Egypt. I will argue that the seal did not denote ownership of the books on which it is found, and I will attempt to show that it was used by its owner in the process of an inventory of Cairo’s endowed libraries. I will also discuss what this insight could mean for interpreting the history of books and collections through seals.

Croatia’s Knowledge Production on Kosovo around 1989

In socialist Yugoslavia in 1989 the extremely sensitive matter of Kosovo had an ambiguous effect on the League of Communists of Croatia, which was then still caught in the so-called “Croatian silence”. It did however provoke much turbulence in the Croatian media, which made pointed comments on the larger Yugoslav crisis, on the situation in Kosovo, and on the politics of Serbian president Slobodan Milošević. An intense dynamic could be also found in the field of knowledge production which encompassed scholars, historians, and intellectuals. Who produced knowledge about Kosovo? What were their political and intellectual agendas? How did they intervene in the dominant discourses and media coverage, what debates and reactions did they spark? Within the frames of the history of knowledge, the history of books and intellectual history, the author here assesses the works on Kosovo of a number of Croatian and Yugoslav intellectuals, chiefly Darko Hudelist and Branko Horvat.

Dark Archives

Review of Rosenbloom, M. (2020). Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

New book science: a look into the future

Modern media2 transformations are accompanied by changes in the spatio-temporal characteristics of social interaction. Traditional and new ways of fixing and transmitting ideas, their materialization through various communication channels are at the heart of these changes. This shapes the need for actualization of research, development of new approaches, clarification of the object and the subject of medialogical disciplines, including book studies.In this study, the main problems of modern Russian bibliology have been identified: limited potential of morally outdated approaches (structural-typological, functional, documentgraphics), a breakaway from the dynamically changing international social and humanitarian agenda and non-participation in international bibliological forums, the functioning of a closed system of scholarly communication. Among other problems are: methodological cliché, limited use of sociological methods, slow digitalization of book studies.The contemporary understanding of the production and dissemination of symbolic forms as an unstructured and non-hierarchical system requires fundamentally new research approaches, the extension of methodological tools, crossdisciplinary study of the theory and history of books.The purpose of the article is to form the concept of “a new book science” with the object which should be considered as a system with emphasis on feedback “author – writing – text – reading – reader”.A system of projects focused on practical implementation of this concept is proposed: medialogical approach development; interdisciplinary research of the history of the reader and reading in Russia; the formation of an independent scientific field – the sociology of book – and the design of the eponymous educational discipline; preparation of a modern textbook on book science for higher education.

The historian of the book and book business I. E. Barenbaum (to the 100th anniversary of his birth)

A detailed review of the scientific activities of professor I. Ye. Barenbaum (1921–2006), the most famous representative of the St. Petersburg school of bibliology in the field of the history of books and book business, is given. Particular attention is paid to his contribution to the study of the history of books in the second half of the 19th century. The role of I. Ye. Barenbaum as an innovator and pioneer in the study of the history of the publishing activity of revolutionary democrats is substantiated. The scientific heritage of the scientist is about 400 publications. I. Ye. Barenbaum’s main research activities were the history of the book business of St. Petersburg, the history of revolutionary-democratic book publishing in the 19th century, the history of the reader, and the French book in Russia. The article analyzes the main works devoted to the book business of St. Petersburg. His contribution to the creation of textbooks on the history of the book is shown. The work of I. Ye. Barenbaum on the historiography of the history of the book is considered.

THE INFORMATION BASE OF SIBERIAN AND THE FAR EASTERN LIBRARIES’ LOCAL HISTORY ACTIVITY

The article provides a brief overview of library local lore activity with an emphasis on the local lore direction in book studies and bibliography of the Siberian- Far Eastern region; names organizations providing information support for local lore activities of libraries; lists local lore resources on the websites of regional libraries in Siberia and the Far East. Special attention is paid to the resources generated by the State Public Scientific Technological Library of Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which is the center for information support of local history research in Asian Russia, and obtains unique techniques to create regional databases, as well as highly qualified specialists. It presents a list of databases providing information support of theoretical and practical aspects of local history activity in the regional libraries. Authors give a detailed description of DB “Scientific Sibirika”, which includes regional material on a wide range of local history: history, ethnography, economy, nature and natural resources of certain territories of Siberia and the Far East, Arctic. It is shown that theoretical and methodological research in the field of library local history, individual persons, are presented in the “professional” DB “Librarianship and bibliography in Siberia and the Far East”, which has a special heading “Local lore activities of libraries in Siberia and the Far East”; the bibliologic direction of local lore is implemented in the bibliographic DB “History of books and book business in Siberia and the Far East”. The paper concludes about the importance of library local history in the library activities, and the need to attract information resources of large libraries for more complete implementation of local history research.

Book Microbiomes

This chapter posits the value of learning to read and interpret non-textual and even nonhuman markings—what we might call eco-annotations—on the pages of the aging books we investigate. Manuscript annotations in a book can reveal patterns of readerly use and interaction; similarly, biomatter on the pages of our books allow us to see unexpected patterns and gain new insights into book production, transmission, storage, and deterioration. My case-study here is foxing, the rust-colored blotches that stain the pages of books. After considering the ways book lovers, librarians, and scientists have attempted to make sense of foxing, I suggest a few approaches one might use to read and revalue biomatter in books as biodata: legible, living records that can reveal new insights about the history of books and about the ecosystems in which they are made, preserved, and eventually cease to be.